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There is a certain place that was found somewhere between “Create a campaign idea for me” as a prompt and a place where AI-generated logos started flooding social media platforms like LinkedIn. This place was made of a strange assumption that started spreading: if everyone has access to AI, are agencies still that important?
Are freelancers of value? Because people would start saying “why pay a whole creative team when a chatbot can give you 20 taglines in literally seconds?” We have to admit that it is indeed a fair question; however, it leads to an uncomfortable conclusion.
Because clients were never actually truly paying agencies for access tools. They were and still are paying them for their brains and judgements. For the knowledge and the perspectives they have and are willing to give.
Clients pay agencies because they’re the ones who will choose one of the taglines and tweak it to perfection until it works. In summary, it is safe to say that AI didn’t kill creativity and that is an unpopular opinion. AI did something else and that is expose how much the current industries confuse production rates with real human thinking.
The Canva-ification of Creativity
In today’s world, it is accessible for everyone to literally generate content with nothing. A startup founder can simply create a draft for a campaign in his mind in less than ten minutes. That is, because all AI tools made everything very, extremely accessible to everyone.
Even a marketing intern could easily build a social calendar in no time. And I have to admit that sometimes generated content does look decent. However, that is exactly the problem.
Content is now becoming so easy to produce that you find yourself making content that loses its value while you lose your voice to monotony. Suddenly, everyone has the same content with the same tone, hook, taglines, and style. Yes, AI made it easier to be creative; however, it also created room for scalability for being mediocre.
In order to avoid panicking, you have to be an agency that hasn’t just built its identity around execution. And that is because clients are no longer convinced that “making content” is hard and a bit magical. The magic in their eyes or from their POVs lies in making the right content.
So, What Are Clients Actually Paying For?
They’re paying for things AI still struggles to fake convincingly. Like what? Let me walk you through them:
- They pay you to originally come up with strategy and have strategic thinking.
- They pay for you to be culturally aware and have great on-point timing.
- They pay you to position them in a way that actually differentiates them from others in today’s market.
- They pay you to have emotional intelligence, taste, nuance, and restraint.
- They pay to see the ability to challenge bad ideas.
Maybe clients are becoming ruthless with their demands; however, it is understandable that they don’t need another machine producing endless monotonic options. They need someone who can confidently say, “This will work, and here’s why.
The New Agency Advantage
It is indeed ironic how Ai may end up benefiting strong agencies. With the right amount of use and dependency, it could allow the human element to have that competitive edge over one another. We don’t urge you to hide from AI or not benefit from it; we are telling you to use it faster and with a sharper creative direction behind it. One that a human lays down. Because as much as AI knows how to write sentences professionally, the meaning and value behind the words could only come from a human brain. And this is exactly what fair clients who are not infatuated with AI would be paying for.
